


drifts at your feet

by Waywarder



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Inspired by Poetry, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26066368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waywarder/pseuds/Waywarder
Summary: Crowley didn’t remember the drive to the seashore.There was a lot he didn’t remember, whether purposefully or not… he wouldn’t ever tell you. Fuck you, that’s why.Inspired by Walt Whitman'sAs I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	drifts at your feet

_As I wend to the shores I know not,  
As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d,  
As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,  
As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,  
I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift,  
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,  
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift._

(When did it happen? Does it matter?)

Crowley didn’t remember the drive to the seashore.

There was a lot he didn’t remember, whether purposefully or not… he wouldn’t ever tell you. Fuck you, that’s why. 

(Perhaps he’d only dreamt it.)

What was it Aziraphale had said to him this time, for example? What had Crowley thought he’d observed in Aziraphale’s wobbly blue eyes this time? What had the careless (fuck) touch to his shoulder implied this time?

An empty snarl rose in Crowley’s throat at the not-memory. Salt air filled his worthless lungs. He wasn’t the fucking literature enthusiast in this situation. Surely Aziraphale knew the meanings, the significance so ripe for the exploring within their interactions. Not for the first time or the last, Crowley marveled how someone so clever could be so stupid.

“Stupid,” he bit out loud, furious at everything, always.

The wind off the waves was ferociously cold yet Crowley did not wrap his arms around himself, didn’t draw his jacket tighter about his slight frame. 

If Aziraphale could be stubborn, if Aziraphale could pretend, well, so could he. Yes. He would just imagine he was somewhere pleasant. That the slippery rocks ahead of him were white, warm sands and that the air around him was balmy and perfect. 

He would not pretend he was not alone. 

Yes, he could be stubborn. 

Crowley did not remember kicking off his expensive shoes. He did not remember when it began to rain, the drops plunking almost meditative into the ocean before him. The rain forced his clothes tight against his skin, embracing him like the lover he’d never known. He tried to sigh, but the sound caught in his throat, afraid and unwilling. 

In all his myriad questions, Crowley especially wondered sometimes how… Someone… could dare to claim dominion over the oceans. How could anyone claim to own what they couldn’t see? Crowley imagined the seahorses and the crabs and the monsters all haunting beneath the blackened waters and he laughed bitterly. He thought of whales and then he thought (always) of Aziraphale, warm and dry and cozy in his squashy armchair, a well-worn first edition of _Moby Dick_ in his lap. Crowley remembered Aziraphale once reading enthusiastically to him aloud from the novel.

(There was as much he did remember.)

“ _I love to sail forbidden seas,_ ” Crowley recited, because, while he pretended fervently not to, he remembered every line from every book Aziraphale had ever read to him. His mind was more of a trap than he let on, set for what, he knew not.

Crowley wandered closer to the water, foam beginning to lick at his bare toes. He looked out at the horizon, mussed as it was with the approaching storm. He imagined a boat appearing. He imagined crusty sailors scooping him up and far away. Yes, he’d make a rather dashing pirate, he thought. He suspected he might even be willing to work hard at scraping gunk and barnacles off of a grimy boat in exchange for the freedom of his--

“Stupid,” he cursed again. 

Enchanted now by these piratical thoughts, he wished for a nip of spicy rum. And this time, still unwilling, Aziraphale’s voice read _Treasure Island_ to him. Oh, Aziraphale had liked that one. A treacherous smile crept over Crowley’s wind-bitten face at the memory of Aziraphale’s different voices for the different characters. In another reality, he might have done wonders on the stage, that one. 

“ _Dead men don’t bite,_ ” Aziraphale had growled once and Crowley had laughed.

Crowley wondered what demonic influence he could possibly have over the future of literature. Weren’t there enough books, enough stories at this point? Enough words to dazzle Aziraphale and evoke that sunshine-butter-warmth in his eyes? Enough words to etch themselves into Crowley’s spine, holding him aloft despite the truth? 

The water sloshed up to Crowley’s calves. He stood still and felt sand between his toes and seaweed at his ankles. He wondered about snapping his fingers and divesting himself of his clothing, but no. He wanted to be like this. He wanted to sully the uniform he couldn’t call a uniform. That blacks and the greys that he’d “chosen.” He wanted to kick down the door to the bookshop, shivering and wet and salt-stained, and then he wanted Aziraphale to--

“ _We must go on,_ ” Crowley muttered, _Treasure Island_ again. “ _Because we can’t turn back._ ”

And, without a backward glance, he strode swiftly forward and allowed himself to slip quietly beneath the surface.

He didn’t need to breathe and he’d never really learned to properly swim, so he mostly sat at the sea-bottom, feeling pathetic for the envy he felt toward the fishes who swam past him. 

“ _Fuck off, fish,_ ” he imagined saying, because it felt good to be angry. It felt powerful. It felt like a relief. 

Crowley decided he wanted to see a turtle. Not a little turtle. A great old dinosaur of a turtle.

So, he waited. 

What was it he’d seen on a nature program about sea turtles? Turtles somehow knew to return to the same place they’d been born in order to lay their own eggs? Crowley thought that was sort of beautiful and, hidden as he already was in murky saltwater, he didn’t feel quite so ashamed by the tears that pooled in his eyes over the thought. 

Crowley thought about shells. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to have? Your own built in home and suit of armor. Whenever Aziraphale was being bloody annoying, he’d just duck his flippers into his shell and the angel wouldn’t be able to read everything on his stupid, revealing face. 

And turtles went slowly, didn’t they? 

Perfect. 

Crowley sat at the bottom of the ocean and waited for a sea turtle to come by and allow him to beg for instruction. 

_Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses,  
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,  
(See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last,  
See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,)  
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,  
Buoy’d hither from many moods, one contradicting another,  
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,  
Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,  
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,  
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random,  
Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,  
Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets,  
We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before you,  
You up there walking or sitting,  
Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
